2026 Faculty

Jeanne Thornton is the author of A/S/L, Summer Fun (winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction), and others, as well as the senior editor of Feminist Press, copublisher of Instar Books, and cohost of Brooklyn’s World Transsexual Forum open mic. Her writing has appeared in n+1, WIRED, Evergreen Review, and other places; she has taught for Tin House, One Story, Lambda Literary, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and more.

Michal ‘MJ’ Jones (they/he) is an award-winning poet, parent, and editor living in Oakland, CA. Their poetry has appeared in the American Academy of Poets, Obsidian, Split This Rock, Muzzle Magazine, TriQuarterly Review, ANMLY, & elsewhere. Their debut collection of poetry, HOOD VACATIONS, won the 2024 Lambda Literary Award. They are also the author of a chapbook, SOFT ARMOR (2023), from Black Lawrence Press. A finalist in the 2025 National Poetry Series, MJ has received fellowships from VONA/Voices, Lambda Literary, and Hurston/Wright Foundation.

Susanna Kwan is an artist and writer from San Francisco. Her debut novel, Awake in the Floating City, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize. She teaches writing with The Dream Side.

Lauren Markham is a writer and journalist based in California whose work regularly appears in outlets such as Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine and VQR, where she is a contributing editor. She is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life (2017), A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging (2024), which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the California Book Award, and the Northern California Book Award, and Immemorial, which was recently longlisted for the Pen America Jean Stein Award. She is currently working on her first novel.

Laura Warrell is the author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Oprah Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, Lit Hub and other publications. Laura has attended residencies at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University. 

Syr Hayati Beker (they/them) is a writer and experience creator in search of the queer love language of climate change. Their book, What A Fish Looks Like, a novella in mutated fairy tales was praised by Kate Folk as a “fearlessly innovative… shattering the boundaries of climate fiction,” and by Natalia Theodoridou as “unexpected and brilliant – a deeply queer and riotously joyful lament.” Syr is the co-founder of Queer Cat Productions immersive theater company and The Escapery Collective. Their work appears in Foglifter, Joyland, Fairy Tale Review, F(r)iction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Spunk, Gigantic Sequins, Home is Where you Queer Your Heart (Foglifter Press, 2021), and in theaters, pirate ships, galleries, and queer bars near you. 

Tara Sim is the critically acclaimed author of the Dark Gods Saga, the We Shall Be Monsters duology, the Scavenge the Stars duology, and the Timekeeper trilogy. She can typically be found wandering the wilds of the Bay Area, California. When she’s not chasing cats or lurking in bookstores, she writes books about magic, murder, and mayhem.

Roberto Lovato is the award-winning author of Unforgetting (Harper Collins), a “groundbreaking” memoir the New York Times picked as an “Editor’s Choice.” Newsweek listed Lovato’s memoir as a “must read” book and the Los Angeles Times listed it as one of its 20 Best Books. Lovato is also an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In addition to receiving a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, journalist Lovato has reported on numerous issues—racism, criminal justice, psychedelics and health, violence, terrorism, the drug war and the immigration and refugee crisis—from across the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and France, among other countries.

Emily Lloyd-Jones grew up on a vineyard in rural Oregon, where she played in evergreen forests and learned to fear sheep. She has a BA in English from Western Oregon University and a MA in publishing from Rosemont College. She resides in Northern California, where she enjoys wandering in redwood forests. Her young adult novels include Illusive, Deceptive, The Hearts We Sold, The Bone Houses, and The Drowned Woods. Her middle grade books include Unseen Magic and the forthcoming Unspoken Magic.

Dan López is an Associate Editor at Counterpoint Press based in Los Angeles. His interests include literary and commercial fiction, cultural histories, works in translation (particularly from the Spanish), and books that explore the Hispanic/Latino(a)/Latinx experience. He grew up in Florida and has lived in New York City and San Francisco. His recent titles include The Lilac People, Abundance, The Bog Wife, and Mendo: How an Unlikely Group of Rebels Turned Cannabis into California's Cash Crop.

Anna Ghosh is the founder of Ghosh Literary, an independent literary agency.  Previously a partner at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency in New York City, Anna has nearly three decades of experience in the publishing industry. The Ghosh Agency offers worldwide literary representation for print and digital media and all allied rights, including motion picture and multimedia rights. Anna’s client list includes New York Times bestsellers, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim, National Book Award, Pen Literature and many other awards. Known for discovering and developing writers, she is particularly interested in compelling nonfiction narratives that illuminate some aspect of human endeavor or the natural world. Anna studied Cultural Anthropology and Literary Journalism at Hampshire College, Massachusetts and Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research, New York.  Originally from India, Anna was based in New York City for 16 years and now lives in San Francisco, California.